| name | apex-azure-cost-optimization |
| description | Assess APEX cost and utilization evidence for savings opportunities. Use for cost optimization, rightsizing, orphan candidates, reservations, and Redis cost review. |
| user-invocable | false |
APEX Azure Cost Optimization
Use this skill for an active APEX assessment that evaluates spending and
utilization evidence. It is advisory only: a capability produces evidence and
the kernel decides whether a later task may authorize a change.
Prerequisites
apex/taskContext identifies the target subscriptions, resource boundary,
assessment period, currency, and the cost question to answer.- Each evidence record identifies its producing capability, observation time,
freshness status, target scope, redactions, completeness, and evidence hash.
- Cost, utilization, inventory, and pricing evidence use compatible scopes and
periods. Missing, stale, partial, or scope-mismatched evidence is a blocker.
Workflow
- Confirm the target scope and whether the request is portfolio-wide,
resource-specific, or Redis-specific. Do not expand the boundary from names,
tags, or model memory.
- Separate observed cost from observed utilization, validated price context,
and calculated savings. A calculated estimate is not an invoice prediction.
- Evaluate only evidence-backed candidates using the assessment rules in
cost assessment criteria.
- Classify each candidate as
safe to investigate, review required, or
high risk. State dependencies, uncertainty, evidence hash, and freshness.
- Return ranked opportunities, non-actionable observations, and blockers.
Send any proposed configuration, purchase, scaling, or deletion decision to
the kernel-authorized owning workflow.
Boundaries
- Do not request, run, or imply external queries, scans, direct reads, pricing
lookups, or resource actions. Treat all such observations as scoped
capability-produced evidence.
- Do not treat an orphan candidate, an unused-looking resource, or a missing
tag as proof that removal or downsizing is safe.
- Do not promise savings where pricing evidence is absent, free allowances may
apply, shared allocation is uncertain, or the calculation cannot be traced.
- Escalate evidence that indicates an availability, security, compliance, or
active incident concern to the kernel-selected owning assessment.
Output
Return the target scope, assessment period, evidence hashes and freshness,
findings, estimated savings with method, uncertainty, classification, and
kernel-provided next action. Use indeterminate when evidence cannot support
the conclusion.
References
